I logged into my 401(k) website today and noticed some fees I have never seen before dated 01/28/2015. For each fund I own there (3 funds, each Vanguard index funds), I was charged a "Recordkeeping Fee" in proportion to the size of the holding. The size of the fee was paltry, e.g. $1.66 on...

I changed employers a couple months ago, kinda. I transferred to a sibling company. Both companies were under a larger umbrella and as such I remained under the same benefits plans including the 401k. As part of the transfer, the amount I had paid into the 401k plan was carried over from company A a...

I noticed that the inflation calculator at http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/ quotes the inflation rate for 2014 as the December 2014 over December 2013 rate (~0.8%). If you compare the annual average CPI-U for 2014 to 2013, the rate was double that at 1.6%. If I...

Most: Maxing out both mine and my wife's Roth IRAs, and maxing out my 401k, all invested in Vanguard index funds, and converting my wife's investment account from a smattering of actively managed funds at American Funds to Vanguard indexed funds. At this point we basically have a 3 fund portfolio: E...

I suspect anyone who had little to no international did well this year. *ducks* Yep.. my total-world market-weight AA didn't do well. Dollar-weighted the return was about 5%. My biggest contribution of the year came in May as bonus checks cleared and birthday gifts came in and I just lump summed in...

I did a mock tax return for myself 30 years older and with my conservative retirement goals. I factored in SS, what I expect to need in retirement, etc., and looked at what my net income for the year would be and adjusted until it met what I expect to need. At the end of the day I figured that my ta...

Is there a reason you want only 10-20% in international? I have 50% in myself and global market cap is around 55% if I remember right. It was around that in the recent past but currently it's pretty much 50/50 with the edge going to US. My own spreadsheet which uses the market weights from S&P ...

Maybe because it rhymes which makes it easy to remember? Repeat something often enough, and people will start believing it's true. That could have a lot to do with it. Daniel Kahneman's book "Thinking Fast and Slow" talks about research where various slogans were found to be more agreeabl...

Indexing is the way to go for non-gamblers. But, it sounds like you want to gamble and time the market. You won't find much support for that here, I'm afraid. Bogleheads are turtles. You can pour everything into high-risk sectors and hope for the best ("Why not 100% emerging markets?") but...

1. Are you tied to buying? SoCal, as you mentioned, is expensive and you don't get a lot for your money. Are you planning to stay forever? If not, consider either renting and stashing that downpayment to let it grow (either for retirement or a future home purchase), or consider something like a Pen...

4. No. Why would you? What's the purpose of this investment? In the accumulation phase, the word "sell" shouldn't really be in your vernacular, particularly for TLH purposes... Rather than selling to adjust your AA, why not just tweak your contributions and buy in other places to get in b...

I'd like to look at asset location, selection, and explore some options for mid-near term goals for my wife and I as well as any worth-while year-end tax moves (see her taxable). First, our current status: Emergency Funds : 5 months (~$20,000) ⋅ 2 months in cash savings (tier 1) ⋅&nb...

I have zero interest in lots of things. If it's something I need to know, I will learn enough to do a reasonable job at it. I have no interest in cooking. But my wife works part time (a few nights per week) and the kids need to eat. So I know how to make a few healthy meals the kids like. I have no...

The website for this extension was at http://getquote-tedsoft.blogspot.ca/, but now there is only a message that the blog has been deleted. I can't find any mirrors for the extension. I am aware of the extension which adds GETPRICE, but that is only for the latest price. Is anyone aware of an OpenOf...

I'm keeping an eye on this as well as our annual benefits election period is kicking up in a couple weeks. The HSA option seems like the right one. The last year with an HMO/FSA combo has been painful, albeit cheap. We put aside $1,200 into our FSA and are now looking for reasons to use the remainin...

Is it uncouth to necro a year-old thread? I'm curious how this panned out, Helot. I was recently approached by a friend about IUL, which lead me here eventually after reading a few other threads. He's an old friend of my wife's but I've known him for a year or so and he's a good guy. He linked me co...

Don't forget that there are pretty easy-to-hit limits on those cash back rewards, esp. when it comes to groceries or gas (if they drive a lot). Things like "3% cash back on gas and 2% on groceries on the first $5,000 spent combined per quarter", so read the fine print to do the calculation...

I envy whoever gets to buy my car when Life decides it's time to switch to something with a back seat. '06 Mustang @ 50k miles and it still has that smell. I doubt it'll hit 75k before its 10th birthday. I've taken good care of it. How about option 4) You find someone like me who bought a hot car br...

I usually update my spreadsheet on the 1st of every month... Looks like when I update it on Nov 1st, there's a good chance it won't even register all the craziness of the last 3 weeks, even though the news and even the Boglehead forum had tons of shows and posts about the "crash" To that,...

You know, I read the news about this the other day and it didn't even occur to me to think of it in a market context. I don't know why. Then I popped by BH today and, damn! Reading some of the quotes from that thread reminded me of this doc I watched a while ago about Enron and specifically the stor...

My porfolio is indeed lazy. Pretty much 3 fund.. 401k has different options than my Roth, but all the funds serve 1 of 3 purposes: US Stock Index (S&P 500 / Completion or TSM), International Stock Index, and Short-Term Bond Index. At some point I reasoned that I am currently too young to bother ...

This seems par for the big banks. With Bank of America, they keep statements online for 1 year. I've requested older statements before and they sent them to me no hassle and no charge, even after I had closed all my accounts with them. But those were paper copies, quite more difficult to search. PDF...

Not a question or anything, just sharing a fleeting feeling of accomplishment. At the start of the year, and after having gathered feedback from Bogleheads on various financial questions I had, I laid out a plan to restructure our retirement, savings, and other finances. There was a lot to do: pay o...

I've only been on one cruise and it was a Princess cruise from Seattle to Alaska and back. I'd do it again and again and again, it was wonderful. We got tickets at the last minute for a great discount; it was actually cheaper to go on the 10-day cruise and pay for storage rental, than to pay month-t...

Just happen to stumble across this old thread - as I've been wondering if my Wellesley VWINX was the right way to go for it's cushion of bonds in the bad times.... vs going more into the equity casino with Wellington VWELX. Seems a little tilted with Wellington being a 70/30 mod alloc fund and turn...

Out here in west Los Angeles it is out of hand. There's a neighborhood that's been in development since 2005/2006 called Playa Vista. I rented there for a couple years but last year they wanted to jack up my rent by 8%, so I moved. In 2007 they had to stop development of the area, because 2007, so f...

Also no tax credit for fund-of-funds, for example holding a target retirement fund which holds total international stock index... no credit there, even in taxable. This changed recently. Funds of funds are now eligible for the foreign tax credit. http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Fund_of_funds 2013 fo...

I felt the need to add this. Maybe because it's late and I'm sleep deprived. As an example, looking at Wellington's distributions you can see that it was not very tax efficient. Let's say you had 1,000 shares of Wellington on 3/26/2013 (value: $35,920). For argument's sake, you bought the fund right...

Wouldn't wellington in taxable get charged tax yearly, as it's a mutual fund and not an ETF? There are taxes paid on distributions for stocks, mutual funds, and ETFs. You might find a stock, mutual fund, or ETF which does not pay any dividends.. that's very rare for funds and ETFs though. Every tim...

Nope. To get the tax credit it must be in a taxable account. Also no tax credit for fund-of-funds, for example holding a target retirement fund which holds total international stock index... no credit there, even in taxable.

Thank you all for your feedback. OP - in order to digest the information in this thread - you will know enough or at least be well on your way to knowing enough - to just manage the portfolio yourself. Yep that pretty much sums it up. :-) So, I had said meeting with the adviser. Very nice guy, seems...

Good tips, thank you both. Yeah, over-analyzing things can be fun, as my mountains of spreadsheets for what boils down to a 3-fund portfolio can attest to. ;-) I think the right approach for me is as The Dan suggests. VTSAX in one, VTIAX in the other, for now, and use the 401k to maintain overall ba...

When a fund has a deferred sales charge, how does that affect the cost basis? I'm looking at a fund which had a sales load. Most of that was up-front but later on down the line when a certain requirement wasn't meant there was an additional sales charge applied. Consider these transactions of a fict...

I'm suffering analysis paralysis. The bulk of my savings will be in my 401k. My stock AA is 50/50 US/Non-US. My decision right now is trying to place funds in the appropriate places. My account balances at the moment are not large but large enough that, if I focus on a single fund in each Roth accou...

It's a good question. I think that there are so many questions about implementation is a hint that it's not an appropriate item to consider in one's allocation. What I decided for myself is that I wouldn't think of such a thing in terms of a percentage allocation of my overall portfolio. The percent...

I just thought your expense ratio was a percent taken out of your balance irregardless of how much you had. Can you explain? I just started investing a month ago and am still learning simple concepts. Thanks. That's not exactly how it works. A load fee is something which is taken out of your balanc...

I'm getting married in a few months and we recently designed our system. For cash flow we did this: We each have an individual checking and savings account, and we also have a joint checking and joint savings account. Virtually everything is done through the joint accounts. We agreed on a dollar amo...